Nameless
by nikkilittle
Summary: A homeless amnesiac drifts across an American economic wasteland unaware not only of name, but of sexual identity as well. Last chapter is entire story as a single file for printing or downloading.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: "Genderfree"

The man behind the counter at the homeless shelter repeated his question to me: "I'm sorry to have to ask you this, but which section? Male or female? It's really hard to tell with all that dirt on your face." I stepped back from the counter, but a good look at the rest of me was not likely to be of much help, either. I was about five feet tall, had red hair and freckles, had a very slight build, and had a flat chest. I thought I was male, but I wasn't sure. Taking a look between the legs hadn't helped me, either: I didn't remember which sets of "equipment" went with which sex. The feeling was bizarre. I didn't know who I was, how old I was, or even which sex I was. I asked a question, "Do the showers have dividers for a bit of privacy?" In many homeless shelters, there were no dividers. To my relief, he said "Yes, there are dividers." I told him, "Male."

I put what few belongings I had into a locker and walked over to the shower room. It was rather crowded, and I did not want to expose myself to anyone. I walked into the shower and undressed there. I hung my clothes on a hook at the back of the shower stall. It felt wonderful to wash away weeks of grit and grime. I had been afraid to shower at other homeless shelters because of the lack of dividers in the shower stalls. I did not want anyone to see me. When I finished and put my clothes back on – they were still filthy – I hesitated to leave the stall. I knew what was coming. I stepped out and was immediately greeted with a wolf whistle. "Hey, little darlin', ain't you in the wrong section?" I looked up and fixed the whistler with a look of death. He immediately backed up and apologized. "Whoa! I'm sorry. Damn, I thought you were a chick."

This homeless shelter had some washing machines and dryers that did not require coins. I took the few clothes I had – all men's clothing – and threw them into the washing machine. I decided to stay with my clothes because I did not want to risk losing the few clothes that I had. When my few clothes had finished drying, I went into a closet to change and came right back to wash the filthy clothes that I had been wearing. Who knew when I would get a chance to wash my clothes again? I looked forward to sleeping in clean clothes that night. It had been a very long time.

The next morning I went job hunting which was required to keep my bunk bed and locker. I knew there was no point to looking for a "good" job and so walked into the first mom-and-pop pizza parlour I encountered while walking. There weren't many of those left. The corporate chains had killed most of them off. I had worked in pizza parlours before and thought that this might be one place in which I had some chance of getting hired. The application had that same annoying question that all job applications had: sex? I hesitated for a moment and then checked "male." I wanted to work back in the kitchen as a cook and most pizza parlour cooks were male. It would have been tempting to check "female" if I had wanted to work as a table server, but I knew I didn't have a good enough memory for that. Of course, much of the information in the application was made-up because I didn't remember. For example, I wrote down "Tracy Smith" as my name. When I came to the work history section, I filled it out but left blank the addresses of all the pizza parlours I had worked at – there were quite a few – with the explanation of "now closed." For the most part, it was the truth. The collapse of the middle class in the U.S. had lessened the demand for pizza. I went up to the manager, "Pop" no doubt, and asked if I could give a demonstration of what I knew. Would he let me make a pizza from start to finish? He thought this was unusual, but readily agreed. I made the same type of vegetarian pizza that I had made in so many other mom-and-pop pizza parlours and cooked it flawlessly. "Pop" took a taste and said, "You're hired if you want the cook's job. Unfortunately it doesn't pay any more than minimum wage. The corporate chains have driven standards down through the floor. To compete on price, we have to do this. I do sincerely apologize and will understand if you refuse the job." I accepted the job and told him that having a job would assure me of the right to keep a bunk at the homeless shelter down the road. He winced when I told him that. There was guilt all over his face. He gave me a schedule in which my first day was Monday of next week. I had a few days before I started.

Next I went into a "free store" run by a Catholic charity and picked out some old used clothes. I picked out two pants and two shirts. There were no types of underwear or socks available. Those you had to buy. I walked by a rack which had a dark blue dress that was pleated and looked like it came down to just below the knees. Something in me really wanted that dress. No one was looking and I snatched it and stuffed it in my bag. I knew I would have fun trying to explain the dress to the clerk who inspected all bags at the front door and wrote down what was taken. There was no cost, but I still had to "check out."

The young woman at the front of the store dumped the contents of my bag on the counter and started to write in an inventory book. She raised an eyebrow when she saw the dress mixed in with the two shirts and two pants. She looked me over very closely and said, "You're the most ambiguous-looking person I've ever seen. I honestly believe that you could fool everyone if you wore that dress. I hope you're not a prostitute." I told her that I had just gotten a job at the mom-and-pop pizza parlour down the road. There was no need to mention the name; all the other pizza parlours in the area were corporate-owned. She seemed genuinely relieved to hear that I had a job and told me that she ate there herself sometimes. "Perhaps you'll make a pizza for me someday," she said.

I returned to the homeless shelter and informed the desk clerk that I had found a job at the mom-and-pop pizza parlour down the road. The clerk seemed quite surprised: "It's not often that one of our residents manages to find a job. Living in a homeless shelter is usually considered a disqualification from employment." The "wolf" who had whistled at me in the shower room saw me as I headed for a closet to try on some of my treasures. Before I could say no, he had peeked into my bag and had seen the dress. He looked again into the bag and then at me in surprised confusion. "Are you a transvestite?" I suddenly realized that the "wolf" was a college graduate. He looked at me in confusion and then said, "I know I should be ashamed of myself for asking, but I'd really like to see you in that dress." I smirked and asked him if he was gay. He flushed and said, "Definitely not! I'm just not really convinced that you're a guy. I've got some doubts." I did want to try on the dress – Lord help me! -- and told him to wait outside the closet. I quickly switched into the dress and put my pants and shirt into the bag. I opened the door and let him in. I was not the least bit scared that he might attack me because I had successfully fended off numerous attacks before. I was much stronger than I looked. He looked at me and said, "Damn! You must be a chick. You're too pretty to be a guy!" I couldn't help laughing at that and cocked my head to one side and said, "Why thank you! How very sweet of you!" Then I realized what I was doing and had a sudden attack of panic: "This was a bad idea. Get out. I need to change back before somebody sees me wearing this dress." He eyed me ever more suspiciously but backed out of the closet as I asked.

After I came out of the closet, the wolf motioned me to a vacated corridor. "You're a chick. No guy could have given a performance that convincing. What's going on?" I told him that I had lost my memory and not only didn't know who I was or how old I was, I didn't even know which sex I was. He looked incredulous. "All you have to do is look between your legs if nothing else is convincing," he said. I told him that I didn't even remember which sets of "equipment" went with which sex. "Damn! You are screwed up. Maybe it would be a good idea to get a doctor to look at you. Better yet, a psychologist. If you go to the front counter, they might be able to arrange a physical examination for you which would solve this mystery."

I did as he suggested and went to the front counter to ask for a physical examination. I gave as the reason that I had not had a physical exam in years. I was given an appointment at a city clinic for tomorrow without any questions. The city clinic was a 1.5-mile walk away. There were no buses. There hadn't been any buses for years.

I went in the rest room and waited for a stall to open as I usually did. A guy at one of the wall urinals questioned me: "I've never seen you use one of the stand-ups. You know a couple of us are suspicious that you're a girl." What could I say? I said nothing and waited for a stall to open. The guy at the urinal zipped up and then grabbed my arm. Big mistake. My foot came up lightning quick and caught him square between the legs. While he was sprawled on the floor, I ran out. I went up the stairs two floors and found a bathroom at the end of the hallway next to an office. I made a point of it never to use the main bathrooms again.

The next day I walked the one and a half miles to the clinic for my physical exam and was greeted with a clipboard and seven or eight sheets of paperwork. Right up at the top again was that annoying question: sex? I checked "male" mainly to delay the fuss. I would find out soon enough. As in the pizza parlour, much of the information I gave was made-up. Once again I gave my name as "Tracy Smith". It took me a half hour of scribbling to fill out all the paperwork, and I wondered if anyone would ever look at it after I completed it. After I handed the nurse the paperwork, she motioned for me to follow her to a room. After a wait that seemed an eternity, a doctor walked in. A woman doctor. For some inexplicable reason, I felt relieved at this. I thought I was male, but my doubts were increasing. First she had me strip to my underwear – I was wearing male underwear, of course – and did the usual tests. Then finally came that moment where I had to pull my underwear down. The doctor caught one glimpse and backed away in horror. Then she walked up again to me and asked, "May I look closer? You have a most unusual characteristic." I said "Okay," and she took a closer look. "You appear to be a fully functional hermaphrodite. If you are fully functional, you will be an almost unique case. I don't know for sure." I asked her, "Are you telling me that I'm both male and female at the same time?" "Yes," she said. "The reason your appearance seems to be so ambiguous – I noticed that at first glance at you and I'm sure everyone else does, too – is that your body appears to be in a state of indecision. The removal of one set of sex organs would solve the problem of which sex you are. I need to make an appointment with a specialist for you. You are such a unique case that I'm sure that the necessary operation would be done without charge. You need not worry about cost."

I mentioned that I had no transportation and no money. She said not to worry. "Someone will be sent to pick you up. You are currently living at a homeless shelter?" "Yes," I said, and gave the address. She arranged an appointment for me with a specialist for the next day and arranged a taxi for me. I was a bit unused to getting special treatment.

The next day the specialist gave me an explanation of my choices and what would happen with each choice. Of course the first choice was "Do nothing." This was, of course, the safest choice, but it was definitely not my choice. The second choice was to have the female organs removed. The third choice was to have the male organs removed. The specialist told me that I needed to think about it for awhile, but I told her that I had already made up my mind. "I was afraid of that," she said. "The right choice for you might be the one that you initially think of as the least attractive possibility. Once the operation has been done, there is no going back. The question is what do you want to be?"

"Female," I said.

"Pardon, did I hear you correctly?"

"Female," I said. "I want to be female."

The doctor looked shocked for a moment, and then smiled. "That was the choice that I was going to recommend to you. The quickness of your decision made me think you had chosen the opposite. Would you care to explain the reasons for your choice?"

"The way I think... The way I feel... I'm an emotional and sensitive person. I thought I was male and I always felt that nature must have made a mistake. Now I feel like I am getting a second chance at life. As if nature were correcting its initial mistake. When the operation is done, I want you there to make sure they know what I want. I don't want them cutting out the wrong set of organs. You understand me, don't you?"

"Yes, of course," she said. "I promise I'll be there in the operating room. I'll make sure that you get what you want without any tragic mix-ups. You are sure, aren't you?"

"Absolutely," I said.

The doctor kept her word and was there when the operation was done. When I was back in the recovery ward, she came to see me. She had brought a hand mirror and some make-up. "I'm not really interested in that stuff," I said.

"It's just eyeliner and mascara," she said. "Let me show you how to use it."

"Okay," I said. The doctor proceeded to give me my first lesson in make-up. I slept more soundly that night than I could remember ever sleeping before.

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End of Chapter 1


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: "Identity"

On my last day in the hospital, the doctor, my doctor, came to me with both an offer and a promise. The offer was that I would receive free basic health care in return for allowing my medical history to be entered anonymously into medical research archives and medical textbooks. I agreed with two provisos: that I could break the agreement at any time for any reason or no reason without risk of legal retaliation, and that I would receive a monthly living stipend that was enough to pay for food and clothes. My doctor agreed immediately and signed for her colleagues at the medical research institute. The promise was to search the medical records for hermaphrodites who were fully functional as both sexes. Since there were so few, it should be possible to narrow my possible identities down to fewer than a dozen names. Medical privacy laws would make it impossible to delve deeply into the medical records of such persons, but enough information would be publicly available to determine who I wasn't. By the process of elimination, it might be possible to find my identity.

Upon leaving the hospital, I went straight to the homeless shelter to pick up my belongings. I was so addled by all that had happened that I walked in wearing the dark blue pleated dress that I had picked up at the free store. I walked straight to my locker and started to put my key in when I was stopped by a staff person. "You're in the wrong side. The women's section is in the adjacent side." I turned the key in the lock and swiftly removed my belongings before the staff person could stop me. "How on earth did you get a locker in here?" At that precise moment, the "wolf" that I had encountered earlier came rushing up: "Was I right?" I looked the "wolf" straight in the eye and said "Yes, you were." I asked him how brave he was because there were quite a few of the residents whom I recognized staring at us. "Brave enough, I guess. Why do you ask?" I gave him a quick kiss on the mouth and then dashed out to leave him with the task of explaining. I must admit that the kiss seemed strange as I had for so long thought that I was male. The idea of kissing a woman seemed more comfortable for me. I had the feeling that the psychological adjustments I needed to make would take a long time.

I walked over to the women's section and asked for a locker and a bed. I got a surprise. A new law had taken effect. You now had to show ID to stay in a homeless shelter. The intent was to keep illegal immigrants out of the homeless shelters and to keep tabs on homeless citizens who were coming to be regarded as potential terrorist threats. I had no ID and thus, like the illegal immigrants, was simply out of luck. There was no place left for me but the street. I couldn't legally rent an apartment. I couldn't open a bank account. I couldn't legally get a job. Speaking of jobs...

I walked down to the mom-and-pop pizza parlour I had been working at. My doctor had already contacted him and had explained my situation to him. She had prepared him psychologically for the shock of seeing me wearing a dress. The pizza parlour owner was sympathetic, but told me that he couldn't continue to employ me because my social security number did not exist. I had the social security number of a dead person. "How fitting," I thought. I walked out the front door of the pizza parlour and pondered where to go next. I had not the slightest clue.

I walked down the street to an old bus station bench. There hadn't been any buses in this city for years. Yet another sign of just how entrenched the "fend-for-yourself" mentality had become in this country. After just sitting and staring into space for awhile, an inspiration came out of nowhere to me: this city had once had plans for a subway system, and old uncompleted tunnels still existed underground. I knew where one of the tunnel entrances was said to be located. It was at least two miles away, but I had nothing better to do. I started walking.

In the meantime, I had become quite thirsty and wondered just how a homeless person with no money might get something to drink. I decided to be utterly brazen. I walked into a nearly deserted fast-food restaurant carrying my duffel bag and walked right up to the soft drink dispenser. In full view of the front counter, I took a paper cup and got some ice and water. I made eye contact with the employee, and he looked downwards and stared at the floor. Neither of us said a word. I walked out.

In an hour – or was it two? - I reached the entrance to the abandoned subway tunnel. The entrance was above ground and consisted of concrete walls perhaps fifteen feet high. Was that a sidewalk up above? I heard cars above and figured that a street ran over the top of the entrance. There was a paved path leading to the entrance and overgrown weeds lined the path. There was no one around. I walked up to the gloomy entrance and stared into the blackness. "Down the rabbit hole," I thought. I entered.

One step forward into the blackness and I instantly sensed that I was not alone. Dead silence. Not a rustle. I waited for my eyes to adjust. In the gloom ahead I noticed a faint yellow wash of sunshine filtering through an overhead ventilation grate. It wasn't much, but it was enough to see where I was going. Up ahead I noticed a staircase. Still not a soul in sight. I walked up to the staircase and peered down. Even darker. I took a few steps down and waited again for my eyes to adjust. A faint yellow-white glow from a distant ventilation grate overhead illuminated a subway platform. I continued down and noticed what appeared to be a public restroom. At the other end of the platform, I saw them. There were about 20 adults living down here in this refuge of last resort. No children. None of them moved. I walked up wondering if I would be chased out. No one moved. No one spoke. I suddenly realized that all of these people were for some reason afraid of me. What harm could I possibly do to them? Finally I asked if it was alright for me to stay down here as I had no where else to go. I said that I had expected to find the tunnel completely empty. Someone in the back whom I could not see very well spoke first: "You're as welcome to stay here as any of the rest of us. You will find that you cannot speak to half of the people here. Half of us speak Spanish only. The other half of us speak English only. You wouldn't happen to be bilingual would you?"

"I speak four languages. In order of ability, I speak English, French, Spanish, and finally Portuguese," I said. I noticed a sudden interest in his face.

"We've been praying for someone like you." A sense of great relief was visible in his face. I sensed that he was the unofficial leader of the group, and a reluctant one at that. I then addressed the Spanish speakers in their own language and let them know that they could come to me if they needed someone to translate. The same look of relief washed over their faces as well.

I asked about practicalities. Amazingly enough, the water was still connected to the faucets in the bathrooms. Praise the inefficiency of the eternal, indifferent Republican administrations. They had been cutting budgets for public services for over 30 years. No one thought to cut the water off to the abandoned subway tunnels where the bathrooms were used only by occasional maintenance workers. Several decades ago there had been regular inspections and maintenance work done down here as there was talk of restarting the subway system project. That all died in the 1980s when the new social darwinist order took hold. The residents here flushed the toilets by pouring a bucket of water down the commode. Food, however, was a different problem. This was a hungry, haggard looking bunch. They had been relying on dumpster diving for food. I saw no cooking equipment of any kind. Truth was, they all looked like they were slowly starving to death. I asked a stupid question: "Hasn't anyone here gone to one of the food banks?" Yes they had. The nearest one was miles from here. These people didn't look like they had the stamina to carry a bag of groceries for miles. Without a bus system, the nearest food bank might has well have been on Mars. Everyone here in the tunnels had decided to stay here because there was water, shelter, and access to functioning toilets. It was, in fact, a bit better than the shelters because there were no bureaucrats constantly monitoring everyone. I asked if there was any food available down here in the tunnel. No, there was nothing. If I wanted dinner, I would have to go dumpster diving myself. At least there was water. I went back up the stairs to scrounge for dinner.

One of the Spanish-speaking women followed me up the stairs and offered to lead me to her favorite places to scrounge. After a half-mile walk we were behind a shopping center. She led me to a dumpster behind a grocery store. It was starting to get dark and she seemed in a hurry. She reached behind the dumpster and pulled out a long pole. Up went the lid and she began sifting through the contents. We found several packages of cheese that had been discarded because they had visible mold. She looked irritated at the plastic packaging, but that was no problem. I pulled a pocket knife out of one of my dress pockets and cut open the packages. We peeled off the moldy parts and ate the rest. It wasn't exactly appetizing, but it was better than going hungry until the next day. We ate all the cheese that we found. There was no other edible food in the dumpsters behind the grocery store. She let me know that we had actually gotten lucky. Often there was nothing to be found. I looked my companion over in the twilight. She was even thinner than me. She had the look of an Indian and had a bony face with hollowed-out cheeks. She was short like me and looked like she weighed less than 90 pounds. I shuddered to think what she would look like a month later. I was suddenly very thankful that I had an appointment at the clinic every Saturday afternoon. The agreement I had negotiated included a payment for every time I showed up.

The rest of that week was a nightmare for all of us living in the subway tunnel. The pickings from dumpster diving were quite meager. I decided to make the long walk to the free store where I had originally picked up my dark blue pleated dress. I was hoping to pick up more dresses as I had only the one I was wearing. I was also hoping to get a halfway decent meal in a nearby soup kitchen run by the same church as the free store. I got lucky in the free store and found several petite-size dresses. They were all two or three sizes too large, but I wasn't in a position to be picky. I also found an old hunting knife and a leg holster for it. This was an unusual find and I could not resist taking it. I also took a meat cleaver just in case I ever learned to set rabbit snares and actually caught anything. I was a fish-eating vegetarian – I still am – but who knew what I might eat if I got hungry enough. I also found several small, brown medicine bottles with eyedroppers. I could use those for measuring chlorine bleach into bottles of water. In the nearby soup kitchen, a meal of rice, beans, and vegetables seemed like five-star restaurant fare compared to what I had been eating. I felt just a bit guilty as I imagined what my fellow tunnel dwellers were eating. I looked forward to my first weekly visit to the clinic because I would collect a $150 payment for each time I showed up. I planned on spending the first payment on a large two-burner propane gas camp stove and a canister of propane gas for the subway tunnel. It wasn't just for me. It was for everyone.

The next day I went into the woodlot near the tunnel entrance to practice knife throwing and discovered that I had a remarkable knack for it. My ability to hit an "X" carved onto a tree at twenty feet made me wonder if I had been a circus performer or possibly something far more sinister. I continued to practice stepping five feet farther back each time I could nail a target five times in a row. I got up to forty feet before I began to feel a challenge. I would have started using my knife on the plentiful rabbits in the surrounding area, but we had no way to cook the meat. Tomorrow was my meeting at the clinic. I had already picked out a camp stove at a nearby shopping center.

The next morning I set out on the long walk to the clinic. The air in the morning was a bit cooler and made the length of the trip more bearable. When I finally arrived at the clinic, I signed in at the front desk and promptly fell asleep in a chair. Even a chair was more comfortable than the tunnel floor that I had been sleeping on. None of us in the tunnel had any kind of bedding. I had been using my duffel bag as a pillow. I'm not sure how much time had passed when a nurse woke me up and ushered me in. At the clinic, everyone called me Tracy after the fake name that I had been using. My doctor led me in to an examining room and, after the briefest glance, said "They threw you out of the homeless shelter, didn't they?" The very first thing she did was have me strip and step on a scales. I had already dropped six pounds since I had left the hospital. At this rate I'd be dead in a month. I must admit that, at this point, the thought of death seemed more comforting than frightening. She did many more tests on me and took a blood sample as well. The overall prognosis was that I was in decent shape except for being underweight. She handed me the agreed upon $150 and then opened her purse for something else: "This was my birthday gift. It's good for $200 in that camping goods supply store. I know you can put it to better use than I can." I remember collapsing backwards into a chair as the tears came in great torrents. Hours later an employee woke me from a cot in a back room with the message, "Your cab has arrived, Miss." My doctor had arranged and paid for a cab ride for me back to wherever my "home" might be.

Back "home" at the tunnel I was greeted with the news that one of our group had died. The old woman who had been sick and who could barely move had, mercifully, finally passed away. No one seemed to know what to do. Call the police? I explained the facts to the rest of them: "The fact that she was living here is proof that she has no relatives who care for her. If we turn her over to the county officials, they will place her body in a refrigerated tray at the morgue until someone comes to claim her body. The only way she will get a funeral is if we give her one. We are her family now. Has anybody got a shovel?" No one did. A branch of the camping goods store to which my doctor had given me the gift certificate was located in one of the nearby shopping centers. I made my first purchase on that gift card: a shovel.

The mass expulsion of illegal immigrants and people without adequate identification from homeless shelters resulted in a huge increase in the number of people living on the street. Our little band in the abandoned subway tunnel soon increased to over 100 people. I had used the rest of my camping supplies gift card to purchase a large two-burner propane cook stove and a large cooking pot with a tight lid, and had spent the cash on propane gas cannisters, bulk bags of rice, vegetable oil, and salt. The rice didn't last long with such a large group. There simply wasn't enough food in the dumpsters surrounding the area to sustain us all. Starvation stared all of us in the face. Deep inside I felt something building that was unfamiliar to me: rage. I imagined myself as an avenging demon. Nightmares haunted my sleep. I realized that that meat cleaver I had found in the free store was fate. I knew what I would do with it.

The next morning I began practicing throwing the meat cleaver instead of my knife. It was much heavier and harder to throw, but I gradually built up both accuracy and distance. Two days later I aimed at an old, rotten branch and managed to hit it hard enough to bring it down. I moved on to the next step in the plan which I have still not mentioned: I walked down the creek bed nearby searching for a large, corporate-owned grocery store. About one mile down the creek bed in the opposite direction from the shopping center where we usually scavenged, I found one. I went inside and familiarized myself with the layout of the goods taking special note of where duffel bags were in the camping section and rice and beans were in the dry staples section. I also made note of where the chocolate was as the highly concentrated calories of chocolate could be a life-saver to those too emaciated and weak to move. We had a few people like that in the tunnel. I wondered how long it would be before I needed to use my shovel again.

That evening I broached my plan to a selected group of men and women who were still in relatively good physical condition. I suggested that we take a group of 30 people down the creek bed to a large grocery store located about a mile away in the middle of the night. Half of us would wait in the creek bed and the other half would break into the grocery store through a broken window, grab duffel bags from the camping section, fill the bags with rice, beans, and chocolate, and then dash back out to the creek bed where the other 15 waited. We would take turns carrying our loot and would run all the way back to the subway tunnel. I said that I would be the one to break the glass and would be the first to enter and the first to leave. They all looked at each other horrified by my suggestion. I said that I only wanted them to consider the suggestion and that I would leave them to discuss the matter among themselves. I went outside and climbed twenty feet up a tree where I had hidden a small zip-locked bag of chocolate bars that I had bought at the same time I had purchased rice. I polished off three of the 3.5-ounce bars in rapid succession and still felt hungry. I decided to stop at three as the last thing I needed was to get nauseated and throw anything up. I hoped that the two plastic bags would continue to conceal the smell from animals. I did not dare bring the bars down into the tunnels as I did not have enough to share. The next day I had to get out my shovel. That is when the others agreed to my plan.

I took the selected 30 to a distant part of the tunnel where the only lighting was candlelight, and gave the details of my plan. In the middle of the night, when the grocery store had only a few stockers and security guards inside, we would travel down the creek bed to the store. Half of us would stay at the creek bed and wait. Half would go to the parking lot for the break-in. I chose the members of each group at that point. The members waiting in the creek bed were there to assist with the carrying of the loot to allow alternation of carrying so that no one would be carrying something the entire way back to the tunnel. Of the 15 in the parking lot, two would be lookouts who would dash up to the front store window to peer inside and make sure that no employees were near enough to the window to get hurt by flying glass. I chose those two at that point. The other 12 were to wait behind me in the parking lot. When the two lookouts gave the "all clear" signal, a thumbs up gesture, they would dash back into the parking lot behind me with the other 12. I did not want anyone in front of me or even near me when I threw the meat cleaver at the window as I thought that it was always possible for me to make a bad throw or even slip. I held up the meat cleaver and asked everyone to imagine it hitting them in the chest. Everyone appeared to agree on the need to keep their distance from me when I threw the meat cleaver. I explained that the window probably was rigged with an alarm which would go off the instant it was broken. I needed to break it with one throw. When the window was broken, the two lookouts and I would head straight for the camping goods section to where the duffel bags were kept. We would toss duffel bags to the 12 who would run by and head straight to the dry staples section to grab bags of rice, beans, pasta, and dehydrated soup. The two lookouts would head to the cooking supplies aisle and grab bottles of vegetable oil and containers of salt. I kept the best job for myself: I would run to the candy aisle and dump as many bars of chocolate as would fit into my duffel bag. I explained that the highly concentrated calories of chocolate could be a lifesaver for those of us who were very sick and weak. The total time we could stay in the store needed to stay under two minutes. It was very important to get in and out quick. We wanted to be halfway to the tunnel at least before the police arrived. It was also important that we stay in the creek bed in the water to make it difficult for bloodhounds to track us by scent. "Pretend we're the foxes and the police are the humans with dogs." Everyone agreed to the plan and seemed impressed with the level of detail. Then I drew on the wall a diagram of the store layout with a stub of chalk that I had found in my duffel bag. The dry staples section was straight back from the front window – easy to find. The duffel bags were in the camping goods section to the right of the store. The candy aisle was conveniently located one aisle behind the dry staples. I encouraged anyone who managed to fill his/her duffel bag quickly with dry staples to raid the chocolate supply as well. The raid was to take place that night. I switched into my old men's clothing for what was to be the last time in my life.

Night came all too soon for some of us. We walked silently and slowly down the half-moonlit creek bed toward the store, conserving our energy for the mad dash back to the tunnel. We took about a half hour to reach the area adjacent to the targeted grocery store. Half of our group simply sat on the bank to wait and the other half of us ran up to the parking lot. "Two minutes!" I reminded my band of 15. My two lookouts dashed up to the front window, gave the all-clear signal, and dashed back behind me. I pulled back the meat cleaver, took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and let fly. I opened my eyes and was greeted by an ear-splitting crash as a thousand shards of glass flew through the air reflecting the seven colors of the rainbow in an hallucinogenic display of light. The shards of glass dropped to the pavement like the white petals of a crab apple tree caught in a storm. The continuous wail of an alarm assaulted our ears. I jumped through the gap first, and everything became a blur. Everything executed as a finely conceived NFL football play, and in only a moment, our bags were full. Out we went. I grabbed the meat cleaver on the way out, and we were back at the creek bed in what must surely have been less than three minutes. A security guard and three stockers had watched the entire spectacle from a distance, but had made no effort to intervene. We passed our loot to the waiting fifteen and ran straight down the center of the creek bed. At the one-third point the loot was passed back again. I pressed everyone to keep running as I felt we would not be safe even temporarily until we were back in the abandoned tunnels. Such criminals we were!

As soon as we arrived at the tunnels, we discovered that those left behind had already moved everything back farther, much farther, into the tunnels. They had moved us into another station that had no opening to the surface and only one ventilation shaft opening to the surface to admit air and a faint, silvery glow of the half moon overhead. It was enough to breathe. It was enough to see. It was no more. Mercifully, there was a functioning restroom here as well. We would not have to travel back and forth for water and toilets. This station had ancient artwork on the walls. Candles inside glass jars burned in several locations casting cross-secting shadows against the bare cement of the track tunnel.

We spent the next few days utterly paranoid, convinced that the police would show up and haul us all off to prison. Nothing happened. Newspapers that we found lying around had no mention of the robbery. It was as if nothing at all had happened. Deep down inside, I had the feeling that this was a bad sign.

Needless to say, food suddenly was not a problem, and for the next few days we ate like starving wolves. All things considered, we were starving wolves. On Saturday I walked to my clinic appointment in the morning as I had done last week. My doctor looked startled when she saw me: "I had expected you to walk in here looking like an emergency room case." She did all the usual tests and then made me strip to step on the scales. "You're up two pounds. How'd you manage that in one week?" I didn't answer and was suddenly thankful that news of the robbery had not shown up in the newspaper. My doctor was definitely smart enough to put two and two together. She then gave me a lecture about being underweight and handed me the $150 as agreed upon. I asked what all the tests were for. "The data is being recorded as a case study in delayed puberty. You haven't gone through puberty yet even though you're an adult. You know, of course, all the things that happen during puberty." I thought for a moment, and then asked my doctor a question of earth-shattering import: "Am I gonna get a face full of zits?"

Then my doctor gave me the news that I thought I'd never hear. "I found someone who knows your identity. Your data is contained within local police files, but the police department won't release it because of both department policy and privacy laws. In order to get your files, you have to sign for them. It's a catch-22 situation: you can't sign for your files unless you know who you are, and you can't find out who you are without the files. You also don't have any ID to prove who you are. Just being alive is not enough. You're not a criminal is all they would say. I'm going to see if I can get an ACLU lawyer to take on your case. Your identity is your property. There is no human right more basic than that."

The next week was positively surreal. All of us down in the tunnels returned to our previous habits of dumpster diving and traveling to free stores to obtain essential items. We expected the police to show up in force at any moment, but nothing happened. The newspapers continued to contain not the slightest mention of the grocery store robbery. In the tunnels, we discovered a new problem to worry about and began luring feral cats down into the tunnels with some success. We all agreed that the feral cats, uncuddly as they were, were infinitely preferable to that other type of furry creature that had started showing up in the tunnels as soon as a food source showed up.

With the passing of another week, I made my routine trip to the clinic and endured all the usual tests and the now-hated weigh-in that concluded each visit. After giving me the $150, my doctor informed me that an ACLU lawyer was now working on my case, and believed that he had a good chance of prying loose the coveted files at the police department.

When I had reached the tunnels again later that day, one of the two men who had been a lookout for me at the robbery reported that a police officer had been following him the entire day. I figured that arrest was imminent and that there wasn't much we could do about it. In the middle of the night it came. We awoke in the tunnel to dozens of bright flood lights shining in our faces. We were utterly blinded. We were led out of the tunnels one-by-one by men in military-style uniforms and armed with machine guns. All of our group were taken to a high-security prison in the local area and charged with terrorism. The U.S. news media ignored our story, but fortunately a BBC reporter had gotten wind of what had happened and scraped together the story in tiny little pieces from here and there. It was all over the press in foreign countries, but there seemed to be a news blackout in the U.S. concerning our arrest. My doctor, being a paranoid sort who did not trust the U.S. news media or government, had been getting her news from foreign sources via the internet and foreign television stations for years. When she discovered that a large group of homeless people in her area had been arrested for stealing food, she knew what group had been arrested: you see, I had been up two pounds again at my last visit as well. It was an easy deduction for my doctor to make.

Once the BBC publicized the story in the international news media, it became impossible for the U.S. news media to ignore the story. For the time being, we were held in the local prison under the jurisdiction of the local police department as the federal government and local authorities wrangled over the question of whether we terrorists or just thieves. The federal government, including President Jeb Bush, claimed we were "enemy combatants" who should be held in Guantanamo. The reasoning was that the robbery was a "mob action" and thus qualified as terrorism under the Patriot Act. Nearly everyone else disagreed with that reasoning. The press in nearly all foreign countries made a cause celebre of us and proclaimed us a band of modern Jean Valjeans. As the story became better known in the U.S., copycat robberies began occurring in scattered locations across the country. Within a week, grocery store sackings by homeless people spread across the nation and events spiraled out out of control. Twelve days after our arrest, President Jeb Bush declared martial law nationwide and federalized all national guard units and police departments. The national guard and the police were patrolling the streets with orders to shoot looters on sight.

My doctor showed up to visit me at the prison and informed me that my ACLU lawyer had been successful in prying loose my files from the police department. I had been an employee of the police department. She handed me my personnel file with an intensely worried look on her face. I had been an undercover narcotics cop. My small size was a great advantage as no one ever suspected that such a small person might be a cop. I had arrested numerous persons for marijuana charges and was responsible for many nonviolent drug offenders going to prison for long terms. My name was Daniel Alice Shays, and this Daniel was a monster -- a mindless enforcer of the corporate order. As I thought of the cruelties and pain I had inflicted, the tears began to roll. I was horrified at what I had been. I was evil. I was a robot with no compassion. The last page of my personnel file was a psychologist's report. I had begun to doubt the morality of my job. The last straw had been when I had received news that a teenager I had arrested for growing several marijuana plants in his bedroom had been convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison without possibility of parole. I had slammed my badge down on the police captain's desk, taken out my gun and unloaded it, slammed the gun down, poured the bullets down like rain, and proceeded to undress myself down to just shoes and underwear before running out the front door of the police station into the night. Other police officers had followed me out the front door, but I had simply vanished.

A BBC reporter came to interview me about the recent events I had been involved in, and to ask me about Daniel. I gave the reporter this reply: "Daniel was a monster who mindlessly followed orders and inflicted a great deal of pain for no reason other than that it was his job. May God forgive me for the things I did when I was Daniel. I am truly sorry. I am not Daniel anymore. My name is Tracy Smith, and I do not exist."

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The End


	3. Chapter 3

Title: Nameless

Category: TV Shows » Twilight Zone

Author: nikkilittle

Language: English, Rating: Rated: M

Genre: Mystery/Suspense

Published: 12-31-08, Updated: 12-31-08

Chapters: 2, Words: 8,696

THE ENTIRE STORY AS A SINGLE FILE FOR PRINTING OR DOWNLOADING

Chapter 1: "Genderfree"

The man behind the counter at the homeless shelter repeated his question to me: "I'm sorry to have to ask you this, but which section? Male or female? It's really hard to tell with all that dirt on your face." I stepped back from the counter, but a good look at the rest of me was not likely to be of much help, either. I was about five feet tall, had red hair and freckles, had a very slight build, and had a flat chest. I thought I was male, but I wasn't sure. Taking a look between the legs hadn't helped me, either: I didn't remember which sets of "equipment" went with which sex. The feeling was bizarre. I didn't know who I was, how old I was, or even which sex I was. I asked a question, "Do the showers have dividers for a bit of privacy?" In many homeless shelters, there were no dividers. To my relief, he said "Yes, there are dividers." I told him, "Male."

I put what few belongings I had into a locker and walked over to the shower room. It was rather crowded, and I did not want to expose myself to anyone. I walked into the shower and undressed there. I hung my clothes on a hook at the back of the shower stall. It felt wonderful to wash away weeks of grit and grime. I had been afraid to shower at other homeless shelters because of the lack of dividers in the shower stalls. I did not want anyone to see me. When I finished and put my clothes back on – they were still filthy – I hesitated to leave the stall. I knew what was coming. I stepped out and was immediately greeted with a wolf whistle. "Hey, little darlin', ain't you in the wrong section?" I looked up and fixed the whistler with a look of death. He immediately backed up and apologized. "Whoa! I'm sorry. Damn, I thought you were a chick."

This homeless shelter had some washing machines and dryers that did not require coins. I took the few clothes I had – all men's clothing – and threw them into the washing machine. I decided to stay with my clothes because I did not want to risk losing the few clothes that I had. When my few clothes had finished drying, I went into a closet to change and came right back to wash the filthy clothes that I had been wearing. Who knew when I would get a chance to wash my clothes again? I looked forward to sleeping in clean clothes that night. It had been a very long time.

The next morning I went job hunting which was required to keep my bunk bed and locker. I knew there was no point to looking for a "good" job and so walked into the first mom-and-pop pizza parlour I encountered while walking. There weren't many of those left. The corporate chains had killed most of them off. I had worked in pizza parlours before and thought that this might be one place in which I had some chance of getting hired. The application had that same annoying question that all job applications had: sex? I hesitated for a moment and then checked "male." I wanted to work back in the kitchen as a cook and most pizza parlour cooks were male. It would have been tempting to check "female" if I had wanted to work as a table server, but I knew I didn't have a good enough memory for that. Of course, much of the information in the application was made-up because I didn't remember. For example, I wrote down "Tracy Smith" as my name. When I came to the work history section, I filled it out but left blank the addresses of all the pizza parlours I had worked at – there were quite a few – with the explanation of "now closed." For the most part, it was the truth. The collapse of the middle class in the U.S. had lessened the demand for pizza. I went up to the manager, "Pop" no doubt, and asked if I could give a demonstration of what I knew. Would he let me make a pizza from start to finish? He thought this was unusual, but readily agreed. I made the same type of vegetarian pizza that I had made in so many other mom-and-pop pizza parlours and cooked it flawlessly. "Pop" took a taste and said, "You're hired if you want the cook's job. Unfortunately it doesn't pay any more than minimum wage. The corporate chains have driven standards down through the floor. To compete on price, we have to do this. I do sincerely apologize and will understand if you refuse the job." I accepted the job and told him that having a job would assure me of the right to keep a bunk at the homeless shelter down the road. He winced when I told him that. There was guilt all over his face. He gave me a schedule in which my first day was Monday of next week. I had a few days before I started.

Next I went into a "free store" run by a Catholic charity and picked out some old used clothes. I picked out two pants and two shirts. There were no types of underwear or socks available. Those you had to buy. I walked by a rack which had a dark blue dress that was pleated and looked like it came down to just below the knees. Something in me really wanted that dress. No one was looking and I snatched it and stuffed it in my bag. I knew I would have fun trying to explain the dress to the clerk who inspected all bags at the front door and wrote down what was taken. There was no cost, but I still had to "check out."

The young woman at the front of the store dumped the contents of my bag on the counter and started to write in an inventory book. She raised an eyebrow when she saw the dress mixed in with the two shirts and two pants. She looked me over very closely and said, "You're the most ambiguous-looking person I've ever seen. I honestly believe that you could fool everyone if you wore that dress. I hope you're not a prostitute." I told her that I had just gotten a job at the mom-and-pop pizza parlour down the road. There was no need to mention the name; all the other pizza parlours in the area were corporate-owned. She seemed genuinely relieved to hear that I had a job and told me that she ate there herself sometimes. "Perhaps you'll make a pizza for me someday," she said.

I returned to the homeless shelter and informed the desk clerk that I had found a job at the mom-and-pop pizza parlour down the road. The clerk seemed quite surprised: "It's not often that one of our residents manages to find a job. Living in a homeless shelter is usually considered a disqualification from employment." The "wolf" who had whistled at me in the shower room saw me as I headed for a closet to try on some of my treasures. Before I could say no, he had peeked into my bag and had seen the dress. He looked again into the bag and then at me in surprised confusion. "Are you a transvestite?" I suddenly realized that the "wolf" was a college graduate. He looked at me in confusion and then said, "I know I should be ashamed of myself for asking, but I'd really like to see you in that dress." I smirked and asked him if he was gay. He flushed and said, "Definitely not! I'm just not really convinced that you're a guy. I've got some doubts." I did want to try on the dress – Lord help me! -- and told him to wait outside the closet. I quickly switched into the dress and put my pants and shirt into the bag. I opened the door and let him in. I was not the least bit scared that he might attack me because I had successfully fended off numerous attacks before. I was much stronger than I looked. He looked at me and said, "Damn! You must be a chick. You're too pretty to be a guy!" I couldn't help laughing at that and cocked my head to one side and said, "Why thank you! How very sweet of you!" Then I realized what I was doing and had a sudden attack of panic: "This was a bad idea. Get out. I need to change back before somebody sees me wearing this dress." He eyed me ever more suspiciously but backed out of the closet as I asked.

After I came out of the closet, the wolf motioned me to a vacated corridor. "You're a chick. No guy could have given a performance that convincing. What's going on?" I told him that I had lost my memory and not only didn't know who I was or how old I was, I didn't even know which sex I was. He looked incredulous. "All you have to do is look between your legs if nothing else is convincing," he said. I told him that I didn't even remember which sets of "equipment" went with which sex. "Damn! You are screwed up. Maybe it would be a good idea to get a doctor to look at you. Better yet, a psychologist. If you go to the front counter, they might be able to arrange a physical examination for you which would solve this mystery."

I did as he suggested and went to the front counter to ask for a physical examination. I gave as the reason that I had not had a physical exam in years. I was given an appointment at a city clinic for tomorrow without any questions. The city clinic was a 1.5-mile walk away. There were no buses. There hadn't been any buses for years.

I went in the rest room and waited for a stall to open as I usually did. A guy at one of the wall urinals questioned me: "I've never seen you use one of the stand-ups. You know a couple of us are suspicious that you're a girl." What could I say? I said nothing and waited for a stall to open. The guy at the urinal zipped up and then grabbed my arm. Big mistake. My foot came up lightning quick and caught him square between the legs. While he was sprawled on the floor, I ran out. I went up the stairs two floors and found a bathroom at the end of the hallway next to an office. I made a point of it never to use the main bathrooms again.

The next day I walked the one and a half miles to the clinic for my physical exam and was greeted with a clipboard and seven or eight sheets of paperwork. Right up at the top again was that annoying question: sex? I checked "male" mainly to delay the fuss. I would find out soon enough. As in the pizza parlour, much of the information I gave was made-up. Once again I gave my name as "Tracy Smith". It took me a half hour of scribbling to fill out all the paperwork, and I wondered if anyone would ever look at it after I completed it. After I handed the nurse the paperwork, she motioned for me to follow her to a room. After a wait that seemed an eternity, a doctor walked in. A woman doctor. For some inexplicable reason, I felt relieved at this. I thought I was male, but my doubts were increasing. First she had me strip to my underwear – I was wearing male underwear, of course – and did the usual tests. Then finally came that moment where I had to pull my underwear down. The doctor caught one glimpse and backed away in horror. Then she walked up again to me and asked, "May I look closer? You have a most unusual characteristic." I said "Okay," and she took a closer look. "You appear to be a fully functional hermaphrodite. If you are fully functional, you will be an almost unique case. I don't know for sure." I asked her, "Are you telling me that I'm both male and female at the same time?" "Yes," she said. "The reason your appearance seems to be so ambiguous – I noticed that at first glance at you and I'm sure everyone else does, too – is that your body appears to be in a state of indecision. The removal of one set of sex organs would solve the problem of which sex you are. I need to make an appointment with a specialist for you. You are such a unique case that I'm sure that the necessary operation would be done without charge. You need not worry about cost."

I mentioned that I had no transportation and no money. She said not to worry. "Someone will be sent to pick you up. You are currently living at a homeless shelter?" "Yes," I said, and gave the address. She arranged an appointment for me with a specialist for the next day and arranged a taxi for me. I was a bit unused to getting special treatment.

The next day the specialist gave me an explanation of my choices and what would happen with each choice. Of course the first choice was "Do nothing." This was, of course, the safest choice, but it was definitely not my choice. The second choice was to have the female organs removed. The third choice was to have the male organs removed. The specialist told me that I needed to think about it for awhile, but I told her that I had already made up my mind. "I was afraid of that," she said. "The right choice for you might be the one that you initially think of as the least attractive possibility. Once the operation has been done, there is no going back. The question is what do you want to be?"

"Female," I said.

"Pardon, did I hear you correctly?"

"Female," I said. "I want to be female."

The doctor looked shocked for a moment, and then smiled. "That was the choice that I was going to recommend to you. The quickness of your decision made me think you had chosen the opposite. Would you care to explain the reasons for your choice?"

"The way I think... The way I feel... I'm an emotional and sensitive person. I thought I was male and I always felt that nature must have made a mistake. Now I feel like I am getting a second chance at life. As if nature were correcting its initial mistake. When the operation is done, I want you there to make sure they know what I want. I don't want them cutting out the wrong set of organs. You understand me, don't you?"

"Yes, of course," she said. "I promise I'll be there in the operating room. I'll make sure that you get what you want without any tragic mix-ups. You are sure, aren't you?"

"Absolutely," I said.

The doctor kept her word and was there when the operation was done. When I was back in the recovery ward, she came to see me. She had brought a hand mirror and some make-up. "I'm not really interested in that stuff," I said.

"It's just eyeliner and mascara," she said. "Let me show you how to use it."

"Okay," I said. The doctor proceeded to give me my first lesson in make-up. I slept more soundly that night than I could remember ever sleeping before.

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End of Chapter 1

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Chapter 2: "Identity"

On my last day in the hospital, the doctor, my doctor, came to me with both an offer and a promise. The offer was that I would receive free basic health care in return for allowing my medical history to be entered anonymously into medical research archives and medical textbooks. I agreed with two provisos: that I could break the agreement at any time for any reason or no reason without risk of legal retaliation, and that I would receive a monthly living stipend that was enough to pay for food and clothes. My doctor agreed immediately and signed for her colleagues at the medical research institute. The promise was to search the medical records for hermaphrodites who were fully functional as both sexes. Since there were so few, it should be possible to narrow my possible identities down to fewer than a dozen names. Medical privacy laws would make it impossible to delve deeply into the medical records of such persons, but enough information would be publicly available to determine who I wasn't. By the process of elimination, it might be possible to find my identity.

Upon leaving the hospital, I went straight to the homeless shelter to pick up my belongings. I was so addled by all that had happened that I walked in wearing the dark blue pleated dress that I had picked up at the free store. I walked straight to my locker and started to put my key in when I was stopped by a staff person. "You're in the wrong side. The women's section is in the adjacent side." I turned the key in the lock and swiftly removed my belongings before the staff person could stop me. "How on earth did you get a locker in here?" At that precise moment, the "wolf" that I had encountered earlier came rushing up: "Was I right?" I looked the "wolf" straight in the eye and said "Yes, you were." I asked him how brave he was because there were quite a few of the residents whom I recognized staring at us. "Brave enough, I guess. Why do you ask?" I gave him a quick kiss on the mouth and then dashed out to leave him with the task of explaining. I must admit that the kiss seemed strange as I had for so long thought that I was male. The idea of kissing a woman seemed more comfortable for me. I had the feeling that the psychological adjustments I needed to make would take a long time.

I walked over to the women's section and asked for a locker and a bed. I got a surprise. A new law had taken effect. You now had to show ID to stay in a homeless shelter. The intent was to keep illegal immigrants out of the homeless shelters and to keep tabs on homeless citizens who were coming to be regarded as potential terrorist threats. I had no ID and thus, like the illegal immigrants, was simply out of luck. There was no place left for me but the street. I couldn't legally rent an apartment. I couldn't open a bank account. I couldn't legally get a job. Speaking of jobs...

I walked down to the mom-and-pop pizza parlour I had been working at. My doctor had already contacted him and had explained my situation to him. She had prepared him psychologically for the shock of seeing me wearing a dress. The pizza parlour owner was sympathetic, but told me that he couldn't continue to employ me because my social security number did not exist. I had the social security number of a dead person. "How fitting," I thought. I walked out the front door of the pizza parlour and pondered where to go next. I had not the slightest clue.

I walked down the street to an old bus station bench. There hadn't been any buses in this city for years. Yet another sign of just how entrenched the "fend-for-yourself" mentality had become in this country. After just sitting and staring into space for awhile, an inspiration came out of nowhere to me: this city had once had plans for a subway system, and old uncompleted tunnels still existed underground. I knew where one of the tunnel entrances was said to be located. It was at least two miles away, but I had nothing better to do. I started walking.

In the meantime, I had become quite thirsty and wondered just how a homeless person with no money might get something to drink. I decided to be utterly brazen. I walked into a nearly deserted fast-food restaurant carrying my duffel bag and walked right up to the soft drink dispenser. In full view of the front counter, I took a paper cup and got some ice and water. I made eye contact with the employee, and he looked downwards and stared at the floor. Neither of us said a word. I walked out.

In an hour – or was it two? - I reached the entrance to the abandoned subway tunnel. The entrance was above ground and consisted of concrete walls perhaps fifteen feet high. Was that a sidewalk up above? I heard cars above and figured that a street ran over the top of the entrance. There was a paved path leading to the entrance and overgrown weeds lined the path. There was no one around. I walked up to the gloomy entrance and stared into the blackness. "Down the rabbit hole," I thought. I entered.

One step forward into the blackness and I instantly sensed that I was not alone. Dead silence. Not a rustle. I waited for my eyes to adjust. In the gloom ahead I noticed a faint yellow wash of sunshine filtering through an overhead ventilation grate. It wasn't much, but it was enough to see where I was going. Up ahead I noticed a staircase. Still not a soul in sight. I walked up to the staircase and peered down. Even darker. I took a few steps down and waited again for my eyes to adjust. A faint yellow-white glow from a distant ventilation grate overhead illuminated a subway platform. I continued down and noticed what appeared to be a public restroom. At the other end of the platform, I saw them. There were about 20 adults living down here in this refuge of last resort. No children. None of them moved. I walked up wondering if I would be chased out. No one moved. No one spoke. I suddenly realized that all of these people were for some reason afraid of me. What harm could I possibly do to them? Finally I asked if it was alright for me to stay down here as I had no where else to go. I said that I had expected to find the tunnel completely empty. Someone in the back whom I could not see very well spoke first: "You're as welcome to stay here as any of the rest of us. You will find that you cannot speak to half of the people here. Half of us speak Spanish only. The other half of us speak English only. You wouldn't happen to be bilingual would you?"

"I speak four languages. In order of ability, I speak English, French, Spanish, and finally Portuguese," I said. I noticed a sudden interest in his face.

"We've been praying for someone like you." A sense of great relief was visible in his face. I sensed that he was the unofficial leader of the group, and a reluctant one at that. I then addressed the Spanish speakers in their own language and let them know that they could come to me if they needed someone to translate. The same look of relief washed over their faces as well.

I asked about practicalities. Amazingly enough, the water was still connected to the faucets in the bathrooms. Praise the inefficiency of the eternal, indifferent Republican administrations. They had been cutting budgets for public services for over 30 years. No one thought to cut the water off to the abandoned subway tunnels where the bathrooms were used only by occasional maintenance workers. Several decades ago there had been regular inspections and maintenance work done down here as there was talk of restarting the subway system project. That all died in the 1980s when the new social darwinist order took hold. The residents here flushed the toilets by pouring a bucket of water down the commode. Food, however, was a different problem. This was a hungry, haggard looking bunch. They had been relying on dumpster diving for food. I saw no cooking equipment of any kind. Truth was, they all looked like they were slowly starving to death. I asked a stupid question: "Hasn't anyone here gone to one of the food banks?" Yes they had. The nearest one was miles from here. These people didn't look like they had the stamina to carry a bag of groceries for miles. Without a bus system, the nearest food bank might has well have been on Mars. Everyone here in the tunnels had decided to stay here because there was water, shelter, and access to functioning toilets. It was, in fact, a bit better than the shelters because there were no bureaucrats constantly monitoring everyone. I asked if there was any food available down here in the tunnel. No, there was nothing. If I wanted dinner, I would have to go dumpster diving myself. At least there was water. I went back up the stairs to scrounge for dinner.

One of the Spanish-speaking women followed me up the stairs and offered to lead me to her favorite places to scrounge. After a half-mile walk we were behind a shopping center. She led me to a dumpster behind a grocery store. It was starting to get dark and she seemed in a hurry. She reached behind the dumpster and pulled out a long pole. Up went the lid and she began sifting through the contents. We found several packages of cheese that had been discarded because they had visible mold. She looked irritated at the plastic packaging, but that was no problem. I pulled a pocket knife out of one of my dress pockets and cut open the packages. We peeled off the moldy parts and ate the rest. It wasn't exactly appetizing, but it was better than going hungry until the next day. We ate all the cheese that we found. There was no other edible food in the dumpsters behind the grocery store. She let me know that we had actually gotten lucky. Often there was nothing to be found. I looked my companion over in the twilight. She was even thinner than me. She had the look of an Indian and had a bony face with hollowed-out cheeks. She was short like me and looked like she weighed less than 90 pounds. I shuddered to think what she would look like a month later. I was suddenly very thankful that I had an appointment at the clinic every Saturday afternoon. The agreement I had negotiated included a payment for every time I showed up.

The rest of that week was a nightmare for all of us living in the subway tunnel. The pickings from dumpster diving were quite meager. I decided to make the long walk to the free store where I had originally picked up my dark blue pleated dress. I was hoping to pick up more dresses as I had only the one I was wearing. I was also hoping to get a halfway decent meal in a nearby soup kitchen run by the same church as the free store. I got lucky in the free store and found several petite-size dresses. They were all two or three sizes too large, but I wasn't in a position to be picky. I also found an old hunting knife and a leg holster for it. This was an unusual find and I could not resist taking it. I also took a meat cleaver just in case I ever learned to set rabbit snares and actually caught anything. I was a fish-eating vegetarian – I still am – but who knew what I might eat if I got hungry enough. I also found several small, brown medicine bottles with eyedroppers. I could use those for measuring chlorine bleach into bottles of water. In the nearby soup kitchen, a meal of rice, beans, and vegetables seemed like five-star restaurant fare compared to what I had been eating. I felt just a bit guilty as I imagined what my fellow tunnel dwellers were eating. I looked forward to my first weekly visit to the clinic because I would collect a $150 payment for each time I showed up. I planned on spending the first payment on a large two-burner propane gas camp stove and a canister of propane gas for the subway tunnel. It wasn't just for me. It was for everyone.

The next day I went into the woodlot near the tunnel entrance to practice knife throwing and discovered that I had a remarkable knack for it. My ability to hit an "X" carved onto a tree at twenty feet made me wonder if I had been a circus performer or possibly something far more sinister. I continued to practice stepping five feet farther back each time I could nail a target five times in a row. I got up to forty feet before I began to feel a challenge. I would have started using my knife on the plentiful rabbits in the surrounding area, but we had no way to cook the meat. Tomorrow was my meeting at the clinic. I had already picked out a camp stove at a nearby shopping center.

The next morning I set out on the long walk to the clinic. The air in the morning was a bit cooler and made the length of the trip more bearable. When I finally arrived at the clinic, I signed in at the front desk and promptly fell asleep in a chair. Even a chair was more comfortable than the tunnel floor that I had been sleeping on. None of us in the tunnel had any kind of bedding. I had been using my duffel bag as a pillow. I'm not sure how much time had passed when a nurse woke me up and ushered me in. At the clinic, everyone called me Tracy after the fake name that I had been using. My doctor led me in to an examining room and, after the briefest glance, said "They threw you out of the homeless shelter, didn't they?" The very first thing she did was have me strip and step on a scales. I had already dropped six pounds since I had left the hospital. At this rate I'd be dead in a month. I must admit that, at this point, the thought of death seemed more comforting than frightening. She did many more tests on me and took a blood sample as well. The overall prognosis was that I was in decent shape except for being underweight. She handed me the agreed upon $150 and then opened her purse for something else: "This was my birthday gift. It's good for $200 in that camping goods supply store. I know you can put it to better use than I can." I remember collapsing backwards into a chair as the tears came in great torrents. Hours later an employee woke me from a cot in a back room with the message, "Your cab has arrived, Miss." My doctor had arranged and paid for a cab ride for me back to wherever my "home" might be.

Back "home" at the tunnel I was greeted with the news that one of our group had died. The old woman who had been sick and who could barely move had, mercifully, finally passed away. No one seemed to know what to do. Call the police? I explained the facts to the rest of them: "The fact that she was living here is proof that she has no relatives who care for her. If we turn her over to the county officials, they will place her body in a refrigerated tray at the morgue until someone comes to claim her body. The only way she will get a funeral is if we give her one. We are her family now. Has anybody got a shovel?" No one did. A branch of the camping goods store to which my doctor had given me the gift certificate was located in one of the nearby shopping centers. I made my first purchase on that gift card: a shovel.

The mass expulsion of illegal immigrants and people without adequate identification from homeless shelters resulted in a huge increase in the number of people living on the street. Our little band in the abandoned subway tunnel soon increased to over 100 people. I had used the rest of my camping supplies gift card to purchase a large two-burner propane cook stove and a large cooking pot with a tight lid, and had spent the cash on propane gas cannisters, bulk bags of rice, vegetable oil, and salt. The rice didn't last long with such a large group. There simply wasn't enough food in the dumpsters surrounding the area to sustain us all. Starvation stared all of us in the face. Deep inside I felt something building that was unfamiliar to me: rage. I imagined myself as an avenging demon. Nightmares haunted my sleep. I realized that that meat cleaver I had found in the free store was fate. I knew what I would do with it.

The next morning I began practicing throwing the meat cleaver instead of my knife. It was much heavier and harder to throw, but I gradually built up both accuracy and distance. Two days later I aimed at an old, rotten branch and managed to hit it hard enough to bring it down. I moved on to the next step in the plan which I have still not mentioned: I walked down the creek bed nearby searching for a large, corporate-owned grocery store. About one mile down the creek bed in the opposite direction from the shopping center where we usually scavenged, I found one. I went inside and familiarized myself with the layout of the goods taking special note of where duffel bags were in the camping section and rice and beans were in the dry staples section. I also made note of where the chocolate was as the highly concentrated calories of chocolate could be a life-saver to those too emaciated and weak to move. We had a few people like that in the tunnel. I wondered how long it would be before I needed to use my shovel again.

That evening I broached my plan to a selected group of men and women who were still in relatively good physical condition. I suggested that we take a group of 30 people down the creek bed to a large grocery store located about a mile away in the middle of the night. Half of us would wait in the creek bed and the other half would break into the grocery store through a broken window, grab duffel bags from the camping section, fill the bags with rice, beans, and chocolate, and then dash back out to the creek bed where the other 15 waited. We would take turns carrying our loot and would run all the way back to the subway tunnel. I said that I would be the one to break the glass and would be the first to enter and the first to leave. They all looked at each other horrified by my suggestion. I said that I only wanted them to consider the suggestion and that I would leave them to discuss the matter among themselves. I went outside and climbed twenty feet up a tree where I had hidden a small zip-locked bag of chocolate bars that I had bought at the same time I had purchased rice. I polished off three of the 3.5-ounce bars in rapid succession and still felt hungry. I decided to stop at three as the last thing I needed was to get nauseated and throw anything up. I hoped that the two plastic bags would continue to conceal the smell from animals. I did not dare bring the bars down into the tunnels as I did not have enough to share. The next day I had to get out my shovel. That is when the others agreed to my plan.

I took the selected 30 to a distant part of the tunnel where the only lighting was candlelight, and gave the details of my plan. In the middle of the night, when the grocery store had only a few stockers and security guards inside, we would travel down the creek bed to the store. Half of us would stay at the creek bed and wait. Half would go to the parking lot for the break-in. I chose the members of each group at that point. The members waiting in the creek bed were there to assist with the carrying of the loot to allow alternation of carrying so that no one would be carrying something the entire way back to the tunnel. Of the 15 in the parking lot, two would be lookouts who would dash up to the front store window to peer inside and make sure that no employees were near enough to the window to get hurt by flying glass. I chose those two at that point. The other 12 were to wait behind me in the parking lot. When the two lookouts gave the "all clear" signal, a thumbs up gesture, they would dash back into the parking lot behind me with the other 12. I did not want anyone in front of me or even near me when I threw the meat cleaver at the window as I thought that it was always possible for me to make a bad throw or even slip. I held up the meat cleaver and asked everyone to imagine it hitting them in the chest. Everyone appeared to agree on the need to keep their distance from me when I threw the meat cleaver. I explained that the window probably was rigged with an alarm which would go off the instant it was broken. I needed to break it with one throw. When the window was broken, the two lookouts and I would head straight for the camping goods section to where the duffel bags were kept. We would toss duffel bags to the 12 who would run by and head straight to the dry staples section to grab bags of rice, beans, pasta, and dehydrated soup. The two lookouts would head to the cooking supplies aisle and grab bottles of vegetable oil and containers of salt. I kept the best job for myself: I would run to the candy aisle and dump as many bars of chocolate as would fit into my duffel bag. I explained that the highly concentrated calories of chocolate could be a lifesaver for those of us who were very sick and weak. The total time we could stay in the store needed to stay under two minutes. It was very important to get in and out quick. We wanted to be halfway to the tunnel at least before the police arrived. It was also important that we stay in the creek bed in the water to make it difficult for bloodhounds to track us by scent. "Pretend we're the foxes and the police are the humans with dogs." Everyone agreed to the plan and seemed impressed with the level of detail. Then I drew on the wall a diagram of the store layout with a stub of chalk that I had found in my duffel bag. The dry staples section was straight back from the front window – easy to find. The duffel bags were in the camping goods section to the right of the store. The candy aisle was conveniently located one aisle behind the dry staples. I encouraged anyone who managed to fill his/her duffel bag quickly with dry staples to raid the chocolate supply as well. The raid was to take place that night. I switched into my old men's clothing for what was to be the last time in my life.

Night came all too soon for some of us. We walked silently and slowly down the half-moonlit creek bed toward the store, conserving our energy for the mad dash back to the tunnel. We took about a half hour to reach the area adjacent to the targeted grocery store. Half of our group simply sat on the bank to wait and the other half of us ran up to the parking lot. "Two minutes!" I reminded my band of 15. My two lookouts dashed up to the front window, gave the all-clear signal, and dashed back behind me. I pulled back the meat cleaver, took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and let fly. I opened my eyes and was greeted by an ear-splitting crash as a thousand shards of glass flew through the air reflecting the seven colors of the rainbow in an hallucinogenic display of light. The shards of glass dropped to the pavement like the white petals of a crab apple tree caught in a storm. The continuous wail of an alarm assaulted our ears. I jumped through the gap first, and everything became a blur. Everything executed as a finely conceived NFL football play, and in only a moment, our bags were full. Out we went. I grabbed the meat cleaver on the way out, and we were back at the creek bed in what must surely have been less than three minutes. A security guard and three stockers had watched the entire spectacle from a distance, but had made no effort to intervene. We passed our loot to the waiting fifteen and ran straight down the center of the creek bed. At the one-third point the loot was passed back again. I pressed everyone to keep running as I felt we would not be safe even temporarily until we were back in the abandoned tunnels. Such criminals we were!

As soon as we arrived at the tunnels, we discovered that those left behind had already moved everything back farther, much farther, into the tunnels. They had moved us into another station that had no opening to the surface and only one ventilation shaft opening to the surface to admit air and a faint, silvery glow of the half moon overhead. It was enough to breathe. It was enough to see. It was no more. Mercifully, there was a functioning restroom here as well. We would not have to travel back and forth for water and toilets. This station had ancient artwork on the walls. Candles inside glass jars burned in several locations casting cross-secting shadows against the bare cement of the track tunnel.

We spent the next few days utterly paranoid, convinced that the police would show up and haul us all off to prison. Nothing happened. Newspapers that we found lying around had no mention of the robbery. It was as if nothing at all had happened. Deep down inside, I had the feeling that this was a bad sign.

Needless to say, food suddenly was not a problem, and for the next few days we ate like starving wolves. All things considered, we were starving wolves. On Saturday I walked to my clinic appointment in the morning as I had done last week. My doctor looked startled when she saw me: "I had expected you to walk in here looking like an emergency room case." She did all the usual tests and then made me strip to step on the scales. "You're up two pounds. How'd you manage that in one week?" I didn't answer and was suddenly thankful that news of the robbery had not shown up in the newspaper. My doctor was definitely smart enough to put two and two together. She then gave me a lecture about being underweight and handed me the $150 as agreed upon. I asked what all the tests were for. "The data is being recorded as a case study in delayed puberty. You haven't gone through puberty yet even though you're an adult. You know, of course, all the things that happen during puberty." I thought for a moment, and then asked my doctor a question of earth-shattering import: "Am I gonna get a face full of zits?"

Then my doctor gave me the news that I thought I'd never hear. "I found someone who knows your identity. Your data is contained within local police files, but the police department won't release it because of both department policy and privacy laws. In order to get your files, you have to sign for them. It's a catch-22 situation: you can't sign for your files unless you know who you are, and you can't find out who you are without the files. You also don't have any ID to prove who you are. Just being alive is not enough. You're not a criminal is all they would say. I'm going to see if I can get an ACLU lawyer to take on your case. Your identity is your property. There is no human right more basic than that."

The next week was positively surreal. All of us down in the tunnels returned to our previous habits of dumpster diving and traveling to free stores to obtain essential items. We expected the police to show up in force at any moment, but nothing happened. The newspapers continued to contain not the slightest mention of the grocery store robbery. In the tunnels, we discovered a new problem to worry about and began luring feral cats down into the tunnels with some success. We all agreed that the feral cats, uncuddly as they were, were infinitely preferable to that other type of furry creature that had started showing up in the tunnels as soon as a food source showed up.

With the passing of another week, I made my routine trip to the clinic and endured all the usual tests and the now-hated weigh-in that concluded each visit. After giving me the $150, my doctor informed me that an ACLU lawyer was now working on my case, and believed that he had a good chance of prying loose the coveted files at the police department.

When I had reached the tunnels again later that day, one of the two men who had been a lookout for me at the robbery reported that a police officer had been following him the entire day. I figured that arrest was imminent and that there wasn't much we could do about it. In the middle of the night it came. We awoke in the tunnel to dozens of bright flood lights shining in our faces. We were utterly blinded. We were led out of the tunnels one-by-one by men in military-style uniforms and armed with machine guns. All of our group were taken to a high-security prison in the local area and charged with terrorism. The U.S. news media ignored our story, but fortunately a BBC reporter had gotten wind of what had happened and scraped together the story in tiny little pieces from here and there. It was all over the press in foreign countries, but there seemed to be a news blackout in the U.S. concerning our arrest. My doctor, being a paranoid sort who did not trust the U.S. news media or government, had been getting her news from foreign sources via the internet and foreign television stations for years. When she discovered that a large group of homeless people in her area had been arrested for stealing food, she knew what group had been arrested: you see, I had been up two pounds again at my last visit as well. It was an easy deduction for my doctor to make.

Once the BBC publicized the story in the international news media, it became impossible for the U.S. news media to ignore the story. For the time being, we were held in the local prison under the jurisdiction of the local police department as the federal government and local authorities wrangled over the question of whether we terrorists or just thieves. The federal government, including President Jeb Bush, claimed we were "enemy combatants" who should be held in Guantanamo. The reasoning was that the robbery was a "mob action" and thus qualified as terrorism under the Patriot Act. Nearly everyone else disagreed with that reasoning. The press in nearly all foreign countries made a cause celebre of us and proclaimed us a band of modern Jean Valjeans. As the story became better known in the U.S., copycat robberies began occurring in scattered locations across the country. Within a week, grocery store sackings by homeless people spread across the nation and events spiraled out out of control. Twelve days after our arrest, President Jeb Bush declared martial law nationwide and federalized all national guard units and police departments. The national guard and the police were patrolling the streets with orders to shoot looters on sight.

My doctor showed up to visit me at the prison and informed me that my ACLU lawyer had been successful in prying loose my files from the police department. I had been an employee of the police department. She handed me my personnel file with an intensely worried look on her face. I had been an undercover narcotics cop. My small size was a great advantage as no one ever suspected that such a small person might be a cop. I had arrested numerous persons for marijuana charges and was responsible for many nonviolent drug offenders going to prison for long terms. My name was Daniel Alice Shays, and this Daniel was a monster -- a mindless enforcer of the corporate order. As I thought of the cruelties and pain I had inflicted, the tears began to roll. I was horrified at what I had been. I was evil. I was a robot with no compassion. The last page of my personnel file was a psychologist's report. I had begun to doubt the morality of my job. The last straw had been when I had received news that a teenager I had arrested for growing several marijuana plants in his bedroom had been convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison without possibility of parole. I had slammed my badge down on the police captain's desk, taken out my gun and unloaded it, slammed the gun down, poured the bullets down like rain, and proceeded to undress myself down to just shoes and underwear before running out the front door of the police station into the night. Other police officers had followed me out the front door, but I had simply vanished.

A BBC reporter came to interview me about the recent events I had been involved in, and to ask me about Daniel. I gave the reporter this reply: "Daniel was a monster who mindlessly followed orders and inflicted a great deal of pain for no reason other than that it was his job. May God forgive me for the things I did when I was Daniel. I am truly sorry. I am not Daniel anymore. My name is Tracy Smith, and I do not exist."

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The End

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This story is entirely original, and is entirely mine. --Nikki Little


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